Waking up at the crack of dawn to an irritable gnome demanding payment for some valuable information was not how Caval Ignolius planned to start his morning. He had, after all, just gotten back from traveling through a picture to a world one million miles away. His morning's about to get a lot worse. Caval soon learns that someone's trying to kill him, he's gotten on the bad side of a sixteen-eyed personification of evil, and a crotchety old crone is messing with occult magic that could have deadly consequences. Oh, and there's a plot to overthrow his world. Caval has a few problems to solve. Luckily he has help, in the form of enchanted chalk, magical pictures, and a crack team involving a hunchbacked Cyclops, an out-of-practice witch, and an illegal stowaway with an extraordinary gift.